Autistic animals?

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Have there ever been any cases of autistic animals?
Whenever I google for it all I get is stuff about how animals are good companions for autistic people, or how studies have been done comparing autistic kids and chimps (not autistic ones..) but I've never heard a word about non-human autistics. Are we the only species it happens to? Surely not. D:

And I know about the whole thing where cats supposedly act like aspies.That's not the kind of thing I'm looking for at all. (Or stuff like "my dog likes to watch things spin, lolol") I want to know if there are any documented cases of individual animals who have autistic traits unusual for their species.

My ferrets have adhd

I don't think there would be cases of what we call autism in animals. In humans, autistic disorders range mostly in the social areas, and animals don't do social like we do. A dog without a pack is still capable of feeding itself. In fact, that is possibly why autism wasn't detected thousands of years ago, those that had it then were still able to fend for themselves because of the way society was structured at the time.

As I posted in another thread:


I used to keep budgies, which seemed very NT to me. Very chatty, into mutual preening, and if I put an untamed budgie into my very tame flock, it would become tame very quickly, as if trying to fit in. Then I added another breeding male to the aviary, and while there was nothing unusual about him, he had lots of babies and some of them had rather unusual behavioral characteristics. Some of them were hatched and raised by other parents, so it wasn't just him as a parent - I can only assume it was some sort of recessive gene. First I had one that was practically a psychopath - I had to give her away because she kept killing other budgies, and she took on a parrot...and won! Then there was a budgie who kept jumping off things and crash landing (she could fly absolutely fine) - she broke her leg doing that, but kept doing it! Then there was one who I would say HAD to be low-functioning autistic! Seemed completely unaware of the other budgies, ignored alarm calls and the like, but he wasn't blind or deaf or anything, and he never developed normal vocalisations, just kept making baby begging noises into adulthood. Last one I had was more than a little Aspie, so much so that even my Aspie boyfriend noticed him! Personal space issues (hated mutual preening, kind of tensed up and got stressed when another bird tried to touch him), got overheated easily, seemed to not get on too well talking to other budgies (he would go up to them and kind of hesitantly chatter, but without all the body language they communicate with, and the other bird would just ignore him. When he became an adult, he kept mostly to himself, but had just one friend, an old female who he kind of glued himself to), and not to mention, VERY intelligent!

I'm doing a veterinary science degree now, and I hope to someday study that for a phD or something. So you'll be pleased to know, if you're interested in this issue, you may have answers in a few years. SO dibs on that for a thesis - 'autism and PDDs in the domestic parakeet'.

The other thread was called "autism in other species".

I think there is, but we dont see it, cause we dont know how to measure it.

Ive heard people mention for instance cats, that they claimed "Is something wrong with her head poor thing, she purrs no matter what we do and no matter what time of day." They find it cute maybe and self proclaime cat experts might say "She probably was taken away from her mother too young."

Maybe so. Or maybe the cat has an obsessive compusive disorder? We cant really measure it. This was just an example but all of those who has owned more than one pet over the years know that they can be very quirky.

A friend of mine has a cat who "washes windows" as she calls it. Any smooth, cold surface and he can happily sit next to it, "digging" with his front paws. Without any seemingly goal to get to the other side, not using claws and not having great force or strengt. He just sits there spinning happily away at the TV screen, a mirror or a window. He is also very tame in all ways and sociable. But on his own rules. He will not sit in your lap or allow you to hold him to cuddle. He may want to be stroked now and then, but he will sit next to you and it will be over quickly. A sort of autism? Personality? Quirks? Who knows. We have no measurement to animals the same way.


In other animals they also notice this. My grandfather was a sheep farmer with a quite large pack. I was always amazed at him being able to foresee some things. Such as being able to tell that "that sheep would watch her lambs" and get the bottle ready almost before the lambs were born. He knew that that individual sheep never takes care of her offspring. As an example. One might call that anti social behavior.


My theory is instincts. Due to humans being very "dependant" of culture over nature for socialazation and communication, and us having brains that are focused on interpreting eachother and eachother emotions and whatnots over for instance scents and sounds and areas that a predator animal's brain is dedicated too - its more noticable in us. Where as the ordinary house pets, cats, dogs and hamsters - are less noticable because they are somewhat more driven by instinct rather than upbringing into a social society.

May be that trying to recognise autistic traits in animals are more noticable to us in the large apes than in domestic house pets.


Interesting tho, will bookmark this thread in case someone finds some real info on it.

I think I remember reading that scientists have figured out how to give Rett syndrome to rats, but I don't know about straight autism.

My family always refers to our one cat as autistic. She seems to have sensory integration problems, and a lot of unusual personality quirks.

I remember reading that they caused/created autism in mice.

Mutations in an area of chromosome 7 which is related to OCD and autism in humans (CDH2) have recently been shown to be linked to OCD like symptoms in dogs

http://www.theautismnews.com/2010/01/06 ... or-autism/

I've noticed that some border collies and collie crosses have strong genetic tendencies towards anxiety and strange obsessive tendancies. I've never seen any research published about this but vets and farmers I've known have made similar observations about the breed. I lived on a farm once that had one that was fine with anyone outside or inside the house, but if you stood at the door of the house it wanted to rip you to bits. It also had terrible anxiety if the owners took it away from the farm and barked a lot for reasons that often couldn't be understood. It was a good herder and a nice dog once it got to know you, but some dogs with these problems are so agressive they have to be put down. I've also noticed that poodles, another breed that's been bred for intelligence, tend to be nervous dogs. I wonder if this is genetic and if the same or similar genes are responsible?

There are mice with Rett syndrome.

humans are animals. one of billions of species of things. sure all of them are as capable of being off-kilter in some respects as our one species is.

My young cat has a very autistic-like personality, lol.

She mostly hates being handled unless she's tired or wants reassurance.

And she fixates on little visual details. The rest of her littermates would run around exploring everything, and she would sit and run her eyes over patterns in the linoleum. She also did that with the text on my bedroom walls. (I covered them with quotes and poetry.)

yes. animals can have any mental disorder that humans can have although they are harder to diagnose. at the zoo i live by "point defience zoo" there are 2 elephants who are actually diagnosed by probablly an animal psychologist. One is autistic and the other one is bi-polar. They have both killed people too.

If anyone read Temple Grandin's books, "Animals in Translation" or "Animals Make us Human", it seems that most ALL animals are autistic and that an autistic person is more simaliar to an animal. I truthfuly have never felt human or have been able to identify as one. Ever since I was a young child, I felt I was born the wrong species.

My cat seemed to be autistic but aren't all cats?